Jim Richards Truth from the front

Imagine you are a State Representative, running for reelection, and when you go to file your paperwork with the Office of Elections you are informed that your voter registration has been inactivated. That is exactly what happened to @diamondgarcia_ yesterday. Upon further review, ~27% of the voter registrations on Rep Garcia’s street were changed to inactive in May. Spot checks of several streets in some districts show unusually high percentages of registration inactivations. What is going on in the Hawaii voter rolls? Please, everyone-check your voter registration and make sure it’s accurate. Check here: https://olvr.hawaii.gov/

What is it going to take? I am very passionate about racing because at one time I was able to dedicate a portion of my life to it. In the process, I met legends in NASCAR, NHRA, and AMA racing. I have read about riders and drivers killed more times than I care to think about because if nothing else, the movie Days of Thunder got right, the fact that racers hate hospitals because it does remind us that we are human. However what brings me here with this story is that NASCAR, NHRA, AMA, F1, and everybody else who goes or rather runs the show of going fast is not talking about Safety. So I have to ask, What is it going to take? How many more times will John Force have to hit a wall in his funny car? How many more racers are we going to have to kill, and sideline with injuries that they may never recover from? Here in lays the problem for all motorsports. The technology and understanding of what the body of the driver, but the car or motorcycle is going through during the crash. NASCAR and the NHRA both say that cars are projected back across the track in a glancing blow to the softwalls. That the softwall design does not work in straight ways. Yet guardrail technology does work on our Interstate system. The game of safety should never be regulated to the back of the event when and if it can save just one driver regardless of how much it costs or the time required for the event to continue. If you expect me to be the one to come up with a design that does work, I do have an idea for straight-way softwalls, but I was only a locomotive engineer, not a design engineer. Besides, if you expect me to believe that we once went to the moon then someone at NASA could figure the problem out. It is time that all of these racing organizations come together instead of continuing to play in their pools and share their thoughts and designs. The Motorsport Safety Council can say hey NASCAR is doing this and it reduced injuries by 5 % and if we combine it with what this belt or seat maker is doing we can gain another 6% reduction across the entire spectrum of Motorsports. I fear that we could see safety take a back seat not only in racing but in our daily driving as well. NHSC, The DOT, and all the other alphabet agencies are at a critical time with the Chevron case being overturned. That knife cuts both ways. Just as Presidential immunity does for acts legal while in office. You see one of the first fatalities I recall reading about was one of the legends I had got to meet. Killed by a guard rail he struck after being launched from a motorcycle at 100 plus mph. He was 33 years old and it was 1973. I was just beginning my racing career at age 12. I had met Cal Rayburn the year before at the Houston Astrodome during the Flat Track Race because my neighbor was once a part of the HD racing development team. Reading about his death in Cycle News always left me with questions about safety. Cal’s death was caused by a motor seizing and it launched him like a lawn Dart. We look throughout history, and the AMA is still using hay bails while F1 and just about everyone else banned them. Yet the AMA is mandating leathers with airbags. Why can that same technology not be applied to NASCAR, NHRA, and F1? Clearly, if the AMA is mandating them there has to be a benefit to lessening the impact to the body or head. Wrap around seat technology is widespread in NASCAR. NHRA says it is a no go. That they need to be able to move or some other excuse and that they have pads on the roll bars. My Jeep has pads on its roll bars and I would not want to come into contact with them at 60 mph let alone in a funny car running well past 300 mph. So again what is it going to take for someone to break this stigmatism of that don't work here or it is to difficult to replace during an event? Is it going to take creating the Motorsport Safety Council so technology is shared and developed and looked at?

You can bet your ass right this very minute there are drivers and riders hurting because they do not know of some technology that is developed in another field. You can also bet your ass that there will be flack from the same drivers and riders as to why that can not work here, or it is uncomfortable. In a few months, why don't we get someone to ask John Force the question of what is it going to take? He has hit the wall at over 300 mph and spent months recovering each time. John will say the equipment worked that was in the car. I am still here. But what if John had been wearing the leathers with the built-in airbags in connection with the Hann's device and the padding? Could we not ask our question sooner? Or do we really need to kill another legend of motorsports before we take on these challenges? The saddest part of this whole entire story is this; I could continue this story with many more names of drivers and riders, and not one of the officiating bodies has thought to get together and share a fucking thing with the other. It is much easier to say that it will not work here and get another car and driver willing to take the place of the injured or the dead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkpvPWB3jMk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5TiitbSPWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U97ZLeIcWzw https://www.cyclenews.com/2021/09/article/archives-column-cal-rayborn/

I found this on NewsBreak: 'Disc-shaped craft' hovers over Colorado concert venue, employees say: 'It knew it was being watched' https://share.newsbreak.com/7kfa5hw3